Electric wall sockets to provide electricity for household and office electrical appliances are now ubiquitous in most structures. Most commonly, these sockets are located on a lower wall portion near the floor. As a result of such positioning these sockets are accessible to young children and therefore, often become the object of a curious child's attention. An unguarded socket outlet can prove very hazardous and even injurious to such children who are simply unaware of its danger. Many accidents and injuries have resulted from the menace created by the omnipresence of these sockets. Because the eternal curiosity of young children remains unabated, socket covers have been devised to deter surreptious or accidental contact of a child with electrical outlets.
Protective devices resulting from these efforts are illustrated in various patents. For example, Kubik in U.S. Pat. No. 3,068,442, illustrates a socket cover employing a compression spring-bias closed door guard. The sliding guard door is slidably engaged with and connected by two compression springs which are anchored to the main plate of the cover. To access the sockets, the guard is slid above the socket face for inserting an electrical plug.
Dola, U.S. Pat. No. 3,865,456, discloses a cover having two discrete spring-biased closed door guards which provides slots for the prongs of a plug. Inserting the plug prongs into the slots and moving the plug and therefor the guard to a position corresponding with the slots of one of the electrical outlets, will permit the plug to be fully inserted into the outlet.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,988,242 relates to a socket cover combining dual, oppositely disposed, spring-bias closed door guards. Each of the door guards has a knob and is slidable within the cover and so arranged that pushing the knob causes the corresponding door guard to slide within the cover to leave the underlying socket exposed.
Another guard, illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 2,818,991, employs an articulated arm assembly and button actuating linkage which, when depressed, causes two hinged plates to swing open projecting from the front of the cover thereby leaving an outlet exposed.
As the above-listed patents indicate, one of the primary purposes of these covers is to deter access to the socket outlets by a child. The deterence generally involves covering or shielding the socket from direct access. However, the protection cannot amount to too great an inconvenience when the use of the outlet is desired. None of the patents illustrate a device which both covers the socket and incorporates a locking and release mechanism to provide a two-stage but not to inconvenient a hinderance to a determined child from surreptious access.